Les Prophecies de Mérlin

Les Prophecies de Merlin, a French prose text originating in Venice circa 1276, is a composite text, consisting of romance material derived from Galfridian and French Arthurian sources and original political prophecies regarding Italian events of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. The text is primarily a series of such political prophecies, as related by Merlin to various fictional scribes, and the amount of romance material embedded around these prophecies varies among the twenty extant manuscripts. The earliest manuscript, dated to 1303, ascribes the text to the authorship of “Maistre Richart d’Irlande,” although scholars agree that the author must have been a Venetian. Additionally, this early manuscript, Rennes, Bibliotheque Municipale, MS 593, begins by claiming that the text is a translation commissioned by Emperor Frederick II, but the author evinces a Guelf perspective throughout, representing Frederick II as the “Dragon de Babyloine.” Between 1324 and 1330,Les Prophecies was translated into Italian by Paolino Pieri, a Florentine chronicler, who retained most references to Venetian events.

Bogdanow, Fanni, “Some Hitherto Unknown Fragments of the Prophecies de Merlin,” in F.J. Barnett et al., History and Structure of French (Oxford, 1972), 31-59.

Campbell, Laura J., Translation and Réécriture in the Midd le Ages: Rewriting Merlin in the French and Italian Vernacular Traditions (Durham, 2011). Available at Durham E-Theses Online:http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/705/

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